


Revelations

by extasiswings



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Male Character, Developing Relationship, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Biphobia, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, M/M, Multi, Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 03:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14155317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: Wyatt Logan hates Garcia Flynn. It’s not personal—it’s business. He’s supposed to kill the man, of course it’s business.(If the first time he lays eyes on Flynn in the flesh, he goes dizzy from how fast the world drops out from under him, from the way Flynn’s gaze pins him in place, that...might be a little personal.)





	Revelations

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings. So many warnings. This deals heavily with issues of childhood trauma/abuse, PTSD, toxic masculinity, and internalized homo/biphobia. Since this is Wyatt-centric, he thinks a lot of things that are problematic af at various points as a result of internalized behaviors. There is also a moment in which the word "queer" is used as a slur because the setting for that moment is Texas in the 1980s and it was period appropriate. 
> 
> Finally, this includes implied/referenced Lyatt, Garcy, Jessica/Wyatt, and Garcyatt, but primarily focuses on Wyatt/Flynn. If you're not about that, please police yourself accordingly.

Wyatt Logan hates Garcia Flynn. It’s not personal—it’s business. He’s supposed to kill the man, of course it’s business. 

(If the first time he lays eyes on Flynn in the flesh, he goes dizzy from how fast the world drops out from under him, from the way Flynn’s gaze pins him in place, that...might be a little personal.)

It’s easier when they’re shooting at one another. In the middle of a firefight, there’s no time to consider how Flynn _looks_ firing a gun, just how to avoid getting shot. It’s harder when it’s up close and personal, when Wyatt can’t avoid all of Flynn’s height and bulk and the brutal efficiency with which he uses his body.

(He’d be more pissed about getting beaten so often if Flynn weren’t so damn skilled. Not that Wyatt _isn’t_ pissed, but there’s a grudging respect there as well. And something else—something that makes him flush hot when he looks over his bruises at night—but that’s a rabbit hole he’s not willing to dive down.)

It’s easier to hate Flynn than to like him. Less complicated. Less messy. 

When Wyatt wakes up tied to a chair in 1972, anger seems like an appropriate response. He doesn’t want to have been knocked out, he doesn’t want to be the expendable weak link on the team, he doesn’t want to be left alone with Flynn who looks _painfully_ good—

_Stop. Stop it._

Anger is convenient. Flynn starts talking about foxholes and partners and all Wyatt can think of is Michael Danielson kissing him slick and sloppy and desperate behind a tent in Afghanistan before leaving on the patrol that took his life. Flynn opens up about his family and Wyatt’s own grief and guilt and shame rise to the surface, threatening to overwhelm him—

_For fuck’s sake, be a man._

Anger then, is self-preservation. If he’s busy lashing out, he’s not thinking about his guilt over Jess or the way he wants to set his teeth to Flynn’s throat. If he’s cruel and unkind, it creates enough distance that he doesn’t have to face the truth in what Flynn’s saying—that they’re the same, that they can talk about that, that they can work together with more shared understanding than he’s had from a partner in years, that he _wants_ —

(He gets angry so he doesn’t do something he might regret, like asking Flynn to touch him while he’s tied to a damn chair.)

Anger is easy. And Flynn, well, Flynn gives as good as he gets, cutting so deep with his sharp tongue that Wyatt could swear he actually bleeds. 

It’s fine. 

It’s better that way.

* * *

Wyatt is eight the first time he hears the word _queer_. He doesn’t know what it means, but his dad spits it like poison at two teenage boys across the street and his heart races from the amount of hate packed into a single syllable. That night, he stares up at the ceiling and mouths it to himself, wondering if there’s a way to say it that wouldn’t sound like a curse or if it’s just a bad word like the other bad words Grandpa Sherwin told him never to use. He falls asleep without an answer. 

At twelve, Wyatt hears it again, but then it’s directed at him. He still doesn’t understand what it means, but his dad drags him off to the shed after a shy smile from John Card makes him blush at a school picnic. 

_No son of mine_ —

He has bruises for a month and he learns that boys aren’t supposed to look at other boys the way they look at girls. 

It stops him from looking, at least for a while. It doesn’t stop him from wanting to.

* * *

In 1969, Flynn saves a kid and it shakes Wyatt to his core. For one thing, if he’d succeeded in stopping Flynn the way he intended, he would have a dead kid on his conscience. For another, it doesn’t make sense. It’s infuriating. _Flynn’s_ infuriating. 

In Delta Force, they taught Wyatt to think in absolutes. The people shooting at you are the bad ones. The things you have to do are always right. Etcetera. Easy. Simple. 

(Is it bullshit? Yeah, a lot of the time. But when you spend your days racking up a body count, it makes things a hell of a lot easier to not look too hard at your own actions.)

Flynn is a target. Flynn is a bad person. 

And yet, Flynn saved a kid and swore in 1972 that he only stole the Mothership to bring back his family, that there are worse people he’s trying to take out. 

It makes it difficult not to look at yourself when your enemy is doing everything you would in the same situation. 

(What would he not do for Jessica?) 

Flynn is...complicated. And that makes him dangerous.

Wyatt can’t stop thinking about him. 

_Goddammit._

It only gets worse after 1780, where for a few hours they manage to exist on the same side. In David Rittenhouse’s study, for a briefest of moments, they’re a team. Perfectly in sync. Fighting together as though they were born to do it. When Wyatt meets Flynn’s eyes over a dropped redcoat, both of them panting hard, the world falls out from under him the same way it had at the Hindenburg. 

It’s exhilarating. 

And then, Flynn kidnaps Lucy and Wyatt rockets back to anger fast enough to give him whiplash. He let his guard down. He failed. And Lucy—

(Wyatt knows Flynn won’t hurt her, but that doesn’t make it better. Not when he’s run off with the only other woman in the world Wyatt thinks he might be able to—)

It should be unforgivable. 

Should be. 

Except that later, once everything is back to normal, Flynn calls to give Wyatt the name of Jessica’s killer. Because he’d promised. Because it was the right thing to do. 

And Wyatt doesn’t have a goddamn clue what to think about that.

* * *

When Wyatt turns fifteen, he doesn’t run away from home because of a random decision that enough is enough. No, he runs because he kisses Eliza Miller and gets off with Jack Slade on the same day and knows that he’s dead if his dad finds out. Not that he expects Jack to ever say anything, but he’s not exactly going to sit around and risk it. 

So he runs. Steals his dad’s car and lives in it until he makes enough cash smuggling drugs across the border to get his own place. When it finally kicks the bucket, he drives it into a lake and tells himself that’s the end of it. It’s over. He’s fine.

(In reality, he drinks too much and he tries not to kiss any more boys, but the military doesn’t care much about one of those as long as he can shoot straight and the other—

Well, there are a lot of lonely nights in the middle of a desert. It’s not uncommon to help out a friend, so to speak. But there’s a code. An expectation. Because actually being into men, that’s not cool. Admitting that? Wyatt’s seen good men—good _soldiers_ —burned faster than you can say career suicide. He hears the slurs that get thrown around. Hell, he says them. If he grits his teeth and feels sick with shame whenever he does, that’s between him and whatever god he doesn’t believe in.)

When Wyatt meets Ethan Cahill in 1954, it’s...an experience. He talks about his father and Wyatt can’t breathe, suddenly back to age twelve in a cramped shed, biting his lip hard enough to bleed so he won’t scream. It’s all he can do to keep from flinching in his seat.

(A sickness—yeah, he’s known people who talked about it that way. And it’s not true, it’s _not_ , but Wyatt’s always been grateful that he means it when he says he loves women.)

There are so many things he could say, but Lucy is there and they’re in the middle of a mission and when it comes down to it, he doesn’t have any solutions to offer. Not as a Texan soldier with a personal history he never even managed to tell his wife about. Instead, he lets Lucy take the lead because this is her grandfather, not his, and it’s none of Wyatt’s business anyway. 

That doesn’t stop him from thinking about it though. That doesn’t stop him from peeking at those pieces of himself that he’s shoved down more and more over the years and wondering if he’s a hypocrite.

As it turns out, he doesn’t have any answers for himself either.

* * *

Flynn gets arrested and Wyatt’s glad. Out of sight, out of mind. 

Lucy is the one that matters—Lucy, who he’s rapidly falling for. 

Lucy, who he nearly loses forever when Rittenhouse blows up Mason Industries. 

The logical part of Wyatt’s brain knows it’s not Flynn’s fault that their plan—Lucy’s plan—didn’t work. It’s not Flynn’s fault that Rittenhouse got the better of them. But, honestly, Wyatt doesn’t feel a whole hell of a lot like being logical. Especially when Denise Christopher comes back to the godforsaken bunker they’re all stuck in and says Flynn’s interrogation was useless. 

Wyatt sees red. Maybe because it’s always been easier to blame Flynn than himself. But also because, really? The man runs around for months tracking these people, learning enough to put him in a position to take them all out with one well-placed bomb, and he knows nothing? 

“Let me out of here, I’ll interrogate him myself,” Wyatt says.

“He won’t tell you anything different—”

“Then I’ll make him!”

“Master Sergeant Logan,” Denise snaps. “Get yourself together. Garcia Flynn is not your problem anymore.”

_Are you sure about that?_ It’s Flynn’s voice in his head, rough and mocking, and Wyatt storms off before he’s tempted to give Denise more reasons to bench him. Snatching a bottle of painkillers off the kitchen table on the way to his room, he downs several to ease the throbbing in his back and stretches out on the twin bed on his stomach.

He sleeps. He dreams.

(Hands far rougher than Lucy’s tugging at his clothes, sliding over his skin. An accent pulling at his ear. A body that’s too tall, too heavy, too overwhelming, but _fuck, yes, please_ —)

(He wakes up hard and burning with need and punches the pillow before going to take a frigid shower because _godfuckingdammit_.)

When they do finally get Lucy back, Wyatt is once again prepared to pretend Flynn doesn’t exist. Whatever Rittenhouse’s new scheme is, they can handle it. They don’t need him. 

They don’t.

* * *

“We need him.”

“Oh, come on—”

“Lucy—”

(Hollywood, 1941, and they’re having the same fight they’ve been having for hours.)

“It’s not up for discussion,” Lucy continues, cutting off any further argument with a hard look at both of her teammates. “We would have been dead in the water, possibly literally, without his help on these last two trips. And someone tried to kill him this morning. So, yes, since he knows more about Rittenhouse than any of us, since we need him, since I promised him I would get him out of there, yes, we are breaking him out as soon as we’re done here.”

Wyatt’s jaw ticks and he looks away. When she puts it like that, it sounds obvious. It sounds right. But it grates at his insides to accept that maybe they do need Flynn. And it irks him even more that Lucy trusts the man so much despite everything. 

(Because she does trust Flynn. Not only that, she cares about him. It’s obvious no matter what she says to the contrary. And it’s not that Wyatt’s jealous—she cares about him too, hell, she’s almost kissed him twice—but this thing with her and Flynn is impossible to wrap his head around and he hates being in the dark.)

“How do we know he’s not going to run out on us?” Wyatt asks. “Nothing stopping him once he’s out.”

Lucy sighs. “It’s called trust, Wyatt.”

He scoffs. “Trust Flynn?”

“If that’s so impossible, trust me then,” she replies. “Trust _me_. You can do that, right?”

When she looks at him like that? Eyes wide and tired and pleading, asking him to just give her this one thing? 

“Yeah,” Wyatt agrees. “Yeah, I can do that.”

(Because at the end of the day, Lucy is Lucy. And he might not be in love but he’s damn close, so, yes, he can trust her. He can give her this one thing. It probably won’t even be that bad.)

* * *

“To think I escaped prison for this.” 

(No, it’s exactly that bad.)

Wyatt’s riding high on a successful mission and his newly official relationship with Lucy when Flynn struts—really the only word for it— _struts_ into the bunker looking like sin and sends him crashing down. Want hits him like a punch to the gut, but then, just as quickly, he’s furious. 

(Because how dare Flynn, really. Wyatt’s with _Lucy_. He spent the night and the morning in bed with _Lucy_. He wants _Lucy_. What gives Flynn the right to swagger in with his height and his biting sarcasm and everything else and make Wyatt want him as well? No, he won’t allow it.)

“Keep him on a leash,” Wyatt throws out as he stalks out of the room, exercising as much self-control as it takes not to punch Flynn in his smug face, if only because Lucy would probably disapprove of that. But god, he wants to. 

Wyatt hates Garcia Flynn. And it’s not business at all. It’s extremely personal.

Lucy comes after him, and Wyatt doesn’t mind because Lucy is good and this thing between them is incredible and he’s ready, he’s finally ready to move on—

His phone buzzes with the number of a ghost and suddenly, Wyatt isn’t thinking about Flynn or Lucy or anything else.

_Jess._

* * *

“I want a divorce.”

Wyatt’s always told himself that he’s a good husband. Far from perfect, but still good.

It takes Jessica serving him with papers to realize he’s been lying to himself for years.

(The fights, the emotional distance, the way he consistently walked out whenever things would get rough—he may have succeeded in not being his dad, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t cause enough damage on his own.)

He and Jess were barely more than fucked up kids when they met, and Wyatt knows he came home from war even more broken than the night he first fell into her bed. That is, if he ever really came home at all. He’s not so sure he did. 

( _“Wyatt, please, talk to me. I’m your wife.”_

_“There’s nothing to talk about, Jess. I’m fine.”_

_I’m fine. We’re fine. Everything’s fine_. Say it enough and it might be true.)

“Jess, please. Don’t do this.”

(Funny how the tables turn.)

Jess reluctantly agrees to give him another chance and Wyatt latches onto that promise with everything in him, swearing that he’ll be different even though he hasn’t a clue how to do that.

Because ultimately, he’s a one-man wrecking ball. His marriage is in shambles, he’s fucked up everything he had with Lucy in spectacular fashion, the rest of the team is pissed at him for running off—

In fact, the only person who isn’t looking at him differently...is Flynn. Flynn treats him with the same low-level disdain he treats everyone with but Lucy, which is comforting in its own weird way. Because Wyatt can snap and snarl and work out his frustrations and Flynn takes it all and gives it right back, cutting and sharp and bitter. And it’s okay that it hurts because Wyatt is so damn grateful just to not have to walk on eggshells around _someone_. 

(Eventually, it starts feeling less like animosity and more like camaraderie—the barbs don’t sting as much, aren’t meant to cut as deep—and as missions go by, Wyatt begins to think back to foxholes and partners and trust and wonder if maybe he’d been too quick to throw that back in Flynn’s face when it was on offer. Sometimes, he’ll feel Flynn’s eyes on him and wonder if maybe it still is.)

* * *

Jessica leaves again after three months. There’s no fight—no screaming match, no airing of each other’s misdeeds—just quiet resignation. 

“It won’t always be this way,” Wyatt says, standing outside the door of her apartment, hands shoved in his pockets because he doesn’t know what else to do with them. 

Jessica smiles sadly and shakes her head. “I know you, Wyatt. Sure, maybe one day _this_ fight will be over. But you’ll find something else. There’s always another war. Isn’t there?”

(She’s not wrong. He’s been fighting for as long as he can remember—in the schoolyard, in the desert, through all of time and space—and he’s been bleeding out on the battlefield for just as long, using whatever he could find to patch the holes, but never fixing them completely.) 

“Jess…” _I’m sorry._

She kisses him—too quick, but soft enough to shatter him.

“I love you,” she says. “I’ll probably always love you. But I can’t fix you. Can I?”

Wyatt doesn’t answer and Jessica nods once and takes a step back. When she closes the door in his face, he catches a muffled sob before he turns on his heel and walks away. 

He goes back to the bunker—even though he has no desire to face anyone at the moment, Rittenhouse could still be waiting for a chance to grab him—but to his surprise, Flynn’s waiting outside the door. 

“Denise let you out?” Wyatt asks. “Trusting of her.”

“You’re assuming I asked permission,” Flynn replies. Jerking his head in the direction of the overgrown area behind the bunker, he adds, “Come on.” 

And for some reason—either that Wyatt’s completely taken leave of his senses or he’s wrecked enough that Flynn seems like the lesser of two evils when compared to an entire bunker full of people—he goes. Which is how an hour later he finds himself in a small clearing, halfway to shitfaced off half a glass of Wendell Scott’s moonshine and two lukewarm beers. 

At his side, Flynn hasn’t said a word since they arrived and Wyatt’s in no rush to talk about Jessica, but the silence is an itch beneath his skin that he wants to be rid of. The two of them are so similar, but they haven’t talked about that since 1972 and Wyatt’s had just enough to drink and is in a somber enough mood to wonder what else they have in common.

“Your old man ever hit you?” 

It surprises him even as it trips off his tongue, colored by the soft twang of Texas that only rarely makes an appearance these days after so many years elsewhere. And yet, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise at all. Not when _I can’t fix you_ has been playing on repeat in his head ever since he left Jessica’s apartment. 

Flynn snorts. In the dying afternoon light, the shadows playing over his face do nothing to hide the bitter uptick of his lips. 

“Only until I was old enough to hit back,” he replies. Tipping his own beer in mock salute, he takes a long pull from the bottle. Wyatt looks away so he doesn’t stare at the tendons of Flynn’s neck and the way his throat works when he swallows. 

“It fuck you up?” Wyatt asks quietly. He doesn’t glance over at Flynn as he asks, fixing his eyes instead on the label he’s slowly picking off his bottle. 

“Yes,” Flynn admits. There’s no hesitation. If Wyatt hadn’t known what the question was, Flynn could have been agreeing that grass is green or something equally mundane. Given how much time Wyatt’s spent in his own life trying not to acknowledge the exact same thing, it’s strange to hear someone else cop to it so easily. 

“Did you think I would lie about it?” Flynn asks.

Wyatt shakes his head. “No. Not necessarily. That’s just very...self-aware of you.”

“I had a father who liked hitting his wife and his child,” Flynn replies. “I had a wife. And a child. Even if I hadn’t noticed that had an impact before I got married, I was certainly acutely aware of it every moment after.” 

“But you got over it,” Wyatt presses, feeling like he’s scrambling for answers without knowing what the right questions to ask are. “You were able to—to move on. To be a husband. A father. You—you did that.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Flynn says, his voice sharpening, and Wyatt finally looks back to him. Flynn’s jaw clenches and for a moment Wyatt wonders if this is where their night ends, but Flynn doesn’t get up and leave. Instead, he rubs a hand over his face and sighs. 

“Look, there are things that happen in life. And you can deal with them or you can ignore them until they’ve festered badly enough they infect everything else. My father was one of those things for me. Being a soldier—the things I did, things I saw, things that others did to me—that was another. But I didn’t—”

Flynn clears his throat roughly and takes another drink. Wyatt doesn’t say a word on the off chance that might break the moment. 

“Lorena almost left me once,” he confesses after another beat of silence. “I came home on leave after having lost someone who was...a very close friend, and I couldn’t sleep. I was jumping at shadows, hearing things. Then she told me she was pregnant and I was...terrified. I was afraid to even touch her. Finally, she gave me an ultimatum. I could see a doctor or she would move back in with her mother.”

Wyatt chokes on a sip of beer and coughs so badly that Flynn has to slap him on the back. 

“You were in therapy?” He wheezes. Flynn rolls his eyes skyward as though he’s regretting ever saying anything at all. 

“Yes,” he says curtly. “For three months. Twenty sessions. It took five before I actually said anything relevant, and that was only because the doctor told me to stop bullshitting or get out.”

“Tough love.”

“Whatever works, right?”

“Did it?” Wyatt asks. “Work? Therapy?”

Flynn shrugs. “My wife didn’t leave me and I started sleeping more than an hour at a time. That was enough.”

“But it didn’t fix you.” 

_I can’t fix you. Can I?_

“It’s not magic,” Flynn replies. “It’s a tool you can use, but you have to put in the work, no one else can do it for you. And even if you do, it isn’t—scars don’t disappear, Wyatt. You learn to live with them and move forward, but they don’t go away.”

_You can deal with them or you can ignore them until they’ve festered badly enough that they infect everything else._

_You have to put in the work, no one else can do it for you._

Wyatt swallows hard and knocks back the rest of his beer. Because that sounds like absolute hell. The thought of poking around inside his own head to find those places that are still bleeding, that never stopped no matter how hard he told himself they did, the thought of poking _at_ those places makes him sick. With fear, yes, because he’s learned how to deal with pain, but this is a different kind entirely, and also with disgust. Because there’s still a voice in the back of his head that sounds a hell of a lot like his dad saying he’s weak as if that’s the worst thing he could be. 

And yet, he’s already lost his wife. Even if he were to fix things with Lucy now, there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t have the exact same problems. 

_I can’t fix you._

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Wyatt wets his lips and looks up at the sky.

“My dad liked bourbon and leather belts,” he says, and for the first time in twenty years he doesn’t try to laugh it off in the next instant. His stomach rebels in a way that has nothing to do with the alcohol he’s consumed and everything to do with the heavy silence as his words hang in the air. 

“Mine preferred vodka and fists,” Flynn rasps. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Know anything about cars?” Wyatt asks.

“Some,” Flynn replies. 

“I know a lot about cars. You see…”

Wyatt talks until the light is completely gone, until he’s most of the way sober, until he feels like a wet rag that’s been wrung out and is too exhausted to say anything else. And there are plenty of things he doesn’t touch, things that feel far too dangerous to go near, but he’s more honest than he’s been in a long time. 

It’s a start.

* * *

Wyatt doesn’t hate Garcia Flynn at all and he doesn’t have a clue what to think about that. 

It’s not as though anything changes that much after Jessica leaves—around everyone else he and Flynn act the same as always. But once a week, Wyatt finds himself gravitating toward the other man, sometimes to talk, sometimes just to sit in silence with someone who gets it, who may judge him for plenty of other things but won’t for this. 

And as much as those nights leave him with an ache between his ribs, when he goes into his head and considers the raw places he’s slowly bringing back to the surface, they hurt a lot less than they used to. 

(He doesn’t _touch_ Flynn though. He may have stopped getting pissed at the constant low-level buzz of attraction that appears whenever Flynn does, but that in no way means he has to act on it. Or encourage it, for that matter.)

He’s trying. For once, that feels like enough. 

Two weeks after Flynn gets hurt on a trip to 1929, Wyatt sees Lucy slip out of his room in the early morning wearing a shirt far too large to be her own. She doesn’t see him and Wyatt doesn’t say a word, but he spends the next three days replaying the scene over in his head. 

“Are you in love with her?” He asks Flynn the evening of that third day, the two of them once more in the clearing outside the bunker.

To his credit, Flynn doesn’t bother pretending not to understand the question.

“Are you?” Flynn replies. 

Wyatt looks away, the familiar burn of jealousy rising in his blood. Although, whether he’s jealous of Lucy or Flynn, he isn’t...entirely clear. 

“I asked first.” 

“Yes,” Flynn says. “I am. Is that going to be a problem?”

His voice is guarded in a way it hasn’t been around Wyatt in months. It stings more than it should. 

_Is that going to be a problem?_

Wyatt considers that. His own relationship with Lucy is slowly recovering and he’d been hopeful that maybe one day they might be able to start over. Then with Flynn, he has...this. This strange, undefined thing that isn’t a friendship per se but feels like it matters. And Lucy and Flynn apparently have each other. In every way. 

_I don’t want to be alone_ , he thinks, but his throat closes around the words in a cold panic because that isn’t something he can say without it meaning far too much. 

_Is that going to be a problem?_

_Not the way you think._

“I want her to be happy,” Wyatt replies. _I want you both to be happy._

“Wyatt…” 

He glances over when Flynn trails off.

“What?”

The look in Flynn’s eyes is inscrutable, but it pins Wyatt nonetheless. 

“Nothing,” Flynn finally says. “Nothing at all.”

They don’t say anything more about Lucy that night.

* * *

Flynn saves Wyatt’s life in 1859 at Harpers Ferry and Wyatt realizes that not only does he not hate Garcia Flynn, somewhere along the line he’s fallen in love with him. With Flynn, who loves Lucy, who Wyatt also loves because apparently he hates himself enough to fall for both halves of a perfectly happy couple. 

Wyatt gets very drunk that night. 

And then, the next morning, because his luck is just that good, he walks in on Flynn as he’s coming out of the shower. There’s a towel wrapped around Flynn’s hips, but the rest of him is on full display and Wyatt is only human.

_Look away_ , he tells himself.

(He can’t.)

Wyatt knows what a soldier’s body looks like. He can read some of Flynn’s history from his bare skin by sight—gunshot, knife, burn, scalpel—raised patches of scar tissue or sunken pockets that mark him as a dangerous man. But there are other places that pull Wyatt’s focus—the razor sharp edge of his clavicles, the breadth of his shoulders, the—

“A picture would last longer.”

Wyatt flushes hot with shame and want as he wrenches his gaze up to meet Flynn’s. A smirk curves across Flynn’s mouth as he takes in Wyatt’s reaction, which is at once better and worse than if he’d just told Wyatt to get the hell out. 

“It’s rude to stare,” Flynn adds, and the tease hits in a painful enough spot that Wyatt nearly flinches.

“It’s rude to not follow a basic system of house rules either,” Wyatt snaps. “Would it kill you to put a chair in front of the door?”

“It might,” Flynn replies in the lazy, flippant way he has that’s guaranteed to make Wyatt want to punch him even after everything.

Wyatt’s jaw ticks and he stares hard at the ceiling so he’s not tempted to give Flynn’s body another once-over. 

“If you’re done, can you go?” He says. “I need to shower.”

As if he would be so lucky. 

“Tell me what your problem is and I’ll consider it.” 

_For fuck’s sake._

“I don’t have a problem, I just think you should use the system like everyone else.”

“No, that’s not it.” In his peripheral vision, Wyatt sees Flynn take a step toward him and his pulse kicks up a notch. 

( _Fight or flight_ , and Wyatt desperately wants to run, but he can’t make his feet move. He’s hungover and unprepared for this and it’s too much—)

“What’s. Your. Problem?” Flynn asks again, stopping so close that Wyatt can feel the heat from his skin. 

“You,” Wyatt chokes out, closing his eyes in an effort to remind himself that Flynn is _Lucy’s_ and even if he weren’t, Wyatt has _no right_ —

“Me?” The smirk comes through clear as day in Flynn’s voice—too close, much too close— “What’s wrong with me?”

“Flynn—”

_Back off, get out_ —there’s any number of ways that sentence could have ended, but then Flynn’s kissing him and Wyatt can’t think of anything at all. The first kiss is rough—more a fight than a kiss—biting and hot and messy and exactly how Wyatt always assumed Flynn would kiss. But then, Flynn breaks away and cups Wyatt’s jaw before leaning in again, and the second kiss is so gentle it hurts. 

“Garcia—” Wyatt’s voice cracks and Flynn kisses him a third time, just as softly as the second. 

“You’re allowed to want this,” he says. “No one’s ever told you that, have they?”

_No_. Wyatt can’t make the word come, but Flynn nods anyway.

“I thought so.”

Wyatt swallows hard and tries to steady himself, his mind a mess from emotional whiplash and trying to process what exactly is happening. 

“Lucy—”

“Lucy told me to do that weeks ago,” Flynn replies.

_What?_

“She—” 

Flynn cuts Wyatt off with another kiss and then finally steps away. 

“Take your shower,” he says. “Come find us when you’re done. We should talk.”

There’s really nothing Wyatt can think to do but agree.

* * *

Wyatt’s eight the first time he hears the word _queer_. He’s thirty-four the first time he claims it for himself, lying in bed between Garcia Flynn and Lucy Preston—two people who he loves, who somehow love him back—and staring at the ceiling the same way he had way back when he was a kid, turning the word over in his head. 

It doesn’t fix anything—he’s still a mess, all of them are still fighting a war that they may not win, there are still plenty of ways his life could get fucked up in an instant—but it’s another step in the right direction. It matters. 

He matters. 

And that’s a goddamn revelation.


End file.
